1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to service-provision sequence-changing methods, to service-provision sequence-changing devices, and to service-provision sequence-changing computer products.
2. Description of the Related Art
In situations in which service providers cannot manage the simultaneous provision of a service to numerous customers, to provide the service some sort of sequence has to be determined. Ordinarily, that sequence is the order in which customers have made service-provision requests at a service-provision portal. For example, in a case in which someone wants to receive provision of deposit-account withdrawal service at a bank service-window, that person may take a numbered ticket dispensed by serial number alongside the service window, and receive provision of the service when the number he or she has taken is called. Or, in a system for transmitting questions and obtaining replies to them over a network, it is made so that when a question is input into a question-input form displayed on a Web browser and the question is transmitted to a server, replies are prepared and transmitted in the date/time order in which the questions are received. In this way provision of services may be accomplished without mixing up customers.
Notwithstanding such sequencing of the provision of services, in certain circumstances a customer may want prioritized service ahead of other customers. A method of responding to a need of this sort may be, to mention one example, making it so that in a situation in which a customer wants to receive the service of a reply to a question, by paying a special fee that customer may receive a prioritized reply ahead of other customers.
The method as described above of prioritizing, based on payment of a special fee, the sequence in which the provision of services is received means that someone who has paid the fee is served ahead of someone who has not. Nevertheless, with several persons having paid the special fee none can be put ahead of the others; and among customers who have alike paid the special fee in the same amount, providing prioritized service to a particular person is more than likely to leave the other customers with a sense of unfairness.